19 MARCH 2018

Board re-issue purse bids for Ryder v Saunders due to clerical error

Matchroom Sport’s managing director, Eddie Hearn, announced last week that his promotional outfit had won the purse bid to stage the eagerly anticipated British middleweight championship contest between John Ryder and 2008 Olympian Billy Joe Saunders.

However, the board issued a circular yesterday that stated that bids for the contest between the two undefeated Englishmen must be submitted before midday on the 22nd May 2013, and the contest had to be staged before the end of September of this year. There was no mention what happened to Matchroom’s successful bid a week prior

Hearn, who is in the luxurious position of having an exclusive contract with broadcaster Sky Sports, spoke openly in interviews last week that the Matchroom bid for the fight was probably higher than expected and Saunders, the British Champion, would be receiving what he estimated to be a career high purse of £51,000.

It has been revealed today that rival promoter, Frank Warren’s W.Promotions complained to the Board that the purse bid form had been incorrectly filled in by Hearn’s team and had omitted the financial split between the fighters.

Hearn has counteracted this argument on social networking site Twitter, claiming that “there was a complaint the split wasn’t filled out on form (sic) event though it states clearly in the document”

It also appears that the Board were happy with the form prior to the complaint having already provided Matchroom with written confirmation of their success in winning the rights to the stage the fight.

Warren and Hearn have dismissed the idea that there is a battle going on between their two companies, stemming from a number of high profile fighters defecting from W.Promotions to Matchroom over the course of the last year.

However incidents like this cannot be ignored, and it appears that more than a healthy rivalry is developing between the pair.

This is not an isolated incident either. Earlier this year when unveiling featherweight sensation Lee Selby as his latest signing, Hearn spoke of how he wanted to match him with the then promotional free-agent, Joe Murray. Soon after that announcement Murray had been signed by W.Promotions and the fight, sadly, was never to be mentioned again.

It will be interesting to see how the new bids unfold and who will get to stage what will surely be an exciting contest